Page 6

Story: The Hazelwood Pact

Rowan woke up in a tangle of sweat-damp sheets, clutching her pillow like it owed her an apology.

Her palms still buzzed faintly from the harmonic rite, a traitorous echo of Linden's hands that lingered like morning dew on skin.

It made brushing her teeth a personal affront.

It made pulling on her boots an act of vengeance.

Mottle sat smugly on the windowsill, a lumpy silhouette against the morning light, his eyes gleaming like shriveled citrus. "Still glowing, or has the horny faded?"

Rowan didn’t even look at him. She tugged her cloak on with unnecessary violence, half-strangling herself in the process. "I will put you in a jar."

"Oh, good," he croaked, launching himself onto her shoulder. "Threats. That means we’re back to normal."

She didn’t dignify him with a reply. Her silence was weaponized, her expression a full spectrum of withheld violence, and her mood, the specific flavor of sour that came from waking up with tingling palms and dreams full of Linden’s hands, was best left undisturbed.

She shoved the door open and stalked into the street, steps sharp as snapped twigs. The Blackthorn Apothecary slammed shut behind her with the melodrama of an offended ghost.

Unfortunately, Briar’s Hollow did not believe in privacy, personal boundaries, or mornings free from unsolicited social interaction.

The village streets coiled through the land like lazy script written by an absent-minded god.

Cobblestones pressed into uneven patterns, worming between mossy stoops and overgrown planters, each one humming faintly with the residue of old rituals and spilled cider.

Ivy curled around windows like gossip, and the roofs of the houses, most of them leaning at slightly concerning angles, dripped with moss, lantern vines, and the occasional roosting gremlin.

The village smelled, as always, of damp earth and cinnamon, but also something slightly more unholy this morning, as if someone had tried to caramelize desire itself and accidentally summoned a minor baking demon.

Rowan turned the corner and caught sight of it: the bakery.

The Wren sisters’ shop was aggressively cozy in the way of all dangerous things.

The door had a carved sign that read Wren a wheel of cheese went spinning off like a sentient discus.

“Drop dead! ” Clove bleated, entirely without remorse, as she bounded past a spice vendor and skidded into a flower cart with glee.

Rowan turned just in time to witness the goat’s grand finale: a perfectly executed leap over a wicker cart, three terracotta pots, and the hedge fence that bordered Linden’s garden.

She landed among the seedlings with a triumphant bleat, scattering snapdragons and dignity in equal measure. A wheelbarrow full of compost tipped over with a mournful slosh.

And then he appeared.

Linden emerged from the greenery like a dryad’s daydream. Sleeves rolled up, forearms dusted in loam and golden pollen, hair tousled by wind or mischief or both. Of course he was smiling. He always smiled, as if life were a song he happened to know all the words to.

He crouched in the garden bed, murmuring something low and coaxing to Clove as he held out a palm full of rosemary.

The goat, traitorous hellspawn that she was, took one look at him and melted like a drunken bridesmaid at a ceilidh.

She butted her head against his hand and nibbled at the herbs like a creature entirely innocent of market theft and topiary crimes.

Rowan’s stomach did an embarrassing swoop.

She looked away so quickly her hood nearly spun sideways. Her face was hot again. Too hot.

"Still not glowing,” Mottle sighed from her cloak pocket, his tone one of exaggerated disappointment. “But you’re getting flushed just watching him touch a goat. You might be past saving.”

“I will turn you into a decorative soap dish,” she growled.

But even as the words left her lips, her gaze was dragged sideways.

Not by Linden, or the goat, or even the deeply unfortunate flutter of her own traitorous heartbeat, but by something at the edge of the square.

A shimmer. A flicker. A twist in the light that did not belong to sun or heat or shadow.

The wardstone near the old well pulsed faintly, then sputtered. Its glow twisted sideways for a moment like something had tugged it wrong. Rowan frowned. Walked closer. Pressed a hand to its surface.

"Feels... jagged," she muttered.

"Not natural," Mottle agreed, crawling up her arm to peer at it. "That’s not ley flux. That’s interference."

Rowan's brow furrowed. "Someone’s tampering with the ley. Or trying to."

She glanced back across the square, saw Linden crouched among his herbs, brushing soil from a sprig of lemon balm with infinite care.

Something under her skin buzzed, uneasy.

Back at the apothecary, she slammed her supplies onto the counter, warded the doors with more force than necessary, and refused to meet Mottle's eyes as she tried, and failed, to unthink the shape of Linden’s fingers curled around hers.

She had bigger problems.

Like ley lines that didn’t just feel sick, they felt sabotaged .

She clenched her jaw. Brewed something too strong. Burned it. Swore.

This wasn’t working.